Talus and the Frozen King

by Graham Edwards

  Until he'd met Talus, Bran had been of the bow-and-stick persuasion. He'd once asked Talus where he'd learned to use the pyr, but the bard had refused to tell.

  'Far from here, a long time ago,' was all Talus had said. This was his usual answer to such questions. 'There is a hard, cold substance hidden inside the rock and that is what makes the fire flow.'

  Half an explanation, Bran supposed, was better than none. Where Talus was concerned, he'd learned to be grateful for what he got.

  They sat in silence, warming themselves before the flames. A gust of wind blew across the smoke hole, sucking away the fumes. Bran breathed deep, enjoying the clean, warm air. The fire warmed his heart too, reassuring him the world around him was vital and real. It also reminded him just how tired he was. Well, it had hardly been the most restful of nights.

  The wind strengthened and the whalebone rafters began to creak. The creaking was joined by the dull spattering sound of fresh snow falling on the roof. Before long, the gusts had all joined into one and Bran and Talus found themselves sitting underneath a winter storm.

  'I'm not happy about being a prisoner here,' said Bran, stifling a yawn. Outside, Gantor had raised his fur hood against the wind stealing through the passage roof. He looked like a stone blocking a mountain pass. 'We could get away, you know, if we really wanted to.'

  'Tharn's caution is natural.' Talus was rubbing his hands before the flames. 'But he and the others will come to trust us soon.'

  'How do you know?'

  Talus delved into one of the many pouches he carried. He took out his hand and opened it to reveal a scattering of tiny red flakes, almost dust, dark against the bard's pale skin.

  'Is it blood?' said Bran.

  'That is one wrong guess against you. Instead of guessing, Bran, try to look.'

  'I'm too cold for your games. Just tell me.'

  'A low temperature is no excuse for lazy thinking. Look, but with more than just your eyes.'

  Bran shuffled round the hearth until he was sitting right next to Talus. The storm battered against the roof. He sniffed the red flakes, but all he could smell was the peaty aroma of the fire. He licked the end of his finger, dabbed it into the little pile and touched it to his tongue.

  He'd been so convinced it was blood that what he actually tasted surprised him. 'It's just mud. Dried mud.'

  'Better,' said Talus. 'Now it is your turn to ask me a question.' Bran spat and wiped his finger clean on his bearskin. What he really wanted to do was lie down and sleep. But Talus wasn't going to let this rest.

  Actually, Talus was good company when his curiosity was aroused. Bran had lost count of the number of times his friend had involved himself with the affairs of strangers like this. And the bard had a knack of finding his way to the truth.

  It was the part of Talus he was going to miss the most when they parted.

  'Where did it come from?'

  'Excellent! I found it beneath the fingernails of the dead king. I should have seen it when I first examined his body in the arena.'

  'Why didn't you?'

  'It was a difficult situation.'

  'You mean the great Talus actually overlooked something?'

  'I knew we would learn more by visiting the cairn.'

  'You're not answering my question.'

  'Not all questions deserve an answer.'

  'All right, never mind. What does the mud tell us?'

  'Something, perhaps. The king may have struggled with his assailant before his death.

  Clawed at his attacker, for example. If so, it is possible that is where this mud came from. Or perhaps it simply came from the ground.'

  'The shaman paints his face with mud,' said Bran. 'Talus—surely you don't think he did it?'

  He was horrified. As king, Hashath would have been a living vessel for the spirits of all the tribe's ancestors. To strike out at such a man was to strike out at every Creyak villager who had ever lived and died, all the way back to the first dawn. Actually killing a king wasn't just murder. It was genocide.

  No tribesman would have been more aware of this than Mishina. As shaman, he was in constant contact with the ancestors. He would know better than most the consequences of such a desperate crime.

  Those consequences were simple and stark. When the king's murderer eventually faced his own death (for all men must one day pass beyond the smallest door and enter the everlasting dream) he would be immediately seized by the twice-killed ancestors and trapped in a place of torture. The ancestors would send blizzard-wolves to tear out his liver. They would send storm-eagles to rip out his eyes. They would set flood-fires to drown him with flames. His heart they would throw to the giant carrion crows who lived in the black walls of night-ice bounding the wilderness that lay beyond the afterdream's furthest borders. The murderer's soul they would keep for themselves, pinned out for all the spirits to see.

  Despite such dire punishments, king-killers were not unheard-of. But usually they were men who'd lost their wits, or who for some reason didn't comprehend the appalling fate that awaited them.

  Mishina was not such a man. As shaman, he simply couldn't be.

  'The pigment on the shaman's face is blue and yellow, not red,' said Talus. 'But colours can be changed. We cannot discount him yet. Nor is the only inhabitant of Creyak to hide behind a mask of mud—did you not see the many faces watching us from the houses earlier?'

  'Well, whoever this man is ...'

  'Or woman.'

  'You think it was a woman?'

  'I do not know enough to think that. But we have learned from Tharn that the king outlived his wife. Perhaps he found another woman to love. Love is like a moon, Bran, waxing with passion and waning with hate. Most murders are driven by love. I have said this to you before. Yet there are other forms of love than that between a man and a woman.'

  'And you're the expert on love?'

  Talus threw him an inscrutable look and blew the flakes of mud into the fire, where they flashed and vanished. 'All this talk has made me tired. I will conserve my strength now. I will be needing it tonight.'

  'What for? Anyway, you never get tired.'

  'Gantor said we would be eating with the rest of the villagers. It is likely to be a large gathering. Knowing I am a bard, they will want me to tell stories. This I will do, not only because it is what I do, but also because it will help us gain their trust.'

  'Do you think so?'

  'It will also help in another way.'

  'And what's that?'

  'It will distract them.'

  'From what?'

  'From you.'

  'Talus, what do you ...?'

  'I will explain, but first I have an important question to ask you.'

  If he'd been less tired himself, Bran would have let his temper loose on his unfuriating friend. For some reason his temper was nowhere to be found. 'Then ask me,' he sighed.

  'Ever since the day your wife died, you have been afraid of death.'

  'Well, is it any wonder when ...?'

  'Please, let me speak. When we entered the cairn today, you looked like a man stepping off the edge of a cliff. Because of that, the task I have for you ... Bran, this is not something I will tell you to do. I will merely ask it. Because I believe it will be very difficult for you.'

  Bran swallowed. As always, the mention of Keyli had tightened his gut and stabbed needles down the length of his spine. Despite the fire's heat, he felt as if he'd plunged through a fishing hole into ice-cold water.

  'Just tell me what it is you want me to do,' he said.

  'I want you to go back into the cairn. I want you to go to its end, all the way to the door that opens on the afterdream.' Something had sucked all the breath out of Bran's lungs. 'What then?'

  'I want you to open it.'

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Shortly before sunset, Gantor stirred from his post at the door. He clapped his hands together, then beckoned Talus and Bran outside.

  The passage roof was clogged with fresh
snowfall. Talus could see its white blanket through the cracks in the rafters. The willow rafters rattled in the wind and some of the snow filtered through. Gantor himself was sufficiently dusted with the stuff that he resembled one of the white northern bears Talus had heard of in legend.

  'It is time to eat,' Gantor said.

  Their guard marched them down a long, curving passage so low they had to bend double.

  Bran kept glancing around; Talus had no doubt he was checking for escape routes. Well, the task Talus had planned for him would give Bran the perfect opportunity to use one.

  The question was, would he take it?

  At the end of the low passage was a large open space: another arena. Its perimeter was sheltered by a circular whalebone canopy that hung with no apparent means of support.

  'An interesting structure,' said Talus.

  'Rawhide ties carry the weight of the bone back to heavy stones set deep in the ground,' said Gantor.

  'You speak with great knowledge.'

  'I built it.'

  The arena was packed with people; it looked as if the entire village had turned out. Gantor's hanging canopy protected only the arena's outer edge, so the centre lay exposed beneath what was effectively a gigantic smoke hole. With the storm gathering, Talus questioned the wisdom of holding a meeting here tonight. But beneath the hole in the roof was one of the biggest fires he'd ever seen.

  Flames rose from an enormous stack of driftwood. Their heat created a rippling barrier that repelled the worst of the weather. Gantor led them to a spot near the fire. The heat scorched Talus's face. He didn't care. Fire was always welcome, especially during a winter such as this.

  They sat on mats woven from reeds between groups of people they didn't know and who regarded them with naked fascination. Gantor sat beside Talus and said nothing.

  A woman moved through the crowd carrying a large dish of hollowed bark. Smaller dishes clattered on a leather thong around her neck. As she drew nearer, Talus recognised her as the woman who'd served them broth in the king's house.

  When she reached Gantor, the woman plucked three of the small dishes free and filled them with broth from the bigger one. As she turned to leave, she threw Talus a shy smile.

  Gantor handed round the dishes. Talus sniffed his: more stew-of-the-sea. He sipped, tasting clams and herbs and something smoky.

  'They're burning wood,' Bran said as he tucked into his stew. 'How can they afford to do that?' In this cold and remote land, wood was a precious commodity, more prized for building than burning.

  'They do it to honour their king.' Talus continued taking sips from his bowl. Bran had already emptied his. Was his appetite never satisfied?

  An exploding knot of wood sent a ribbon of sparks up into the night. The sparks mingled briefly with the swirling snowflakes before the wind whipped them away.

  'Do you really think I'm going to be able to sneak away?' Bran pitched his voice low. 'And what if there's a guard on the cairn?'

  'There will be no guard. Everyone is here. Nor will there will be any need for you to sneak:

  Tharn's opinion of us has already changed.'

  'Oh, really? What makes you think that?'

  'Did you see the face of the woman who brought the food?'

  'I did. It was a pretty face.'

  'Bran—you are so easily distracted.' Another knot cracked in the fire. A man emerged from the crowd to stand before the flames:

  Tharn. He was dressed in a long robe of dark leather, densely patterned with orange stitches. Beside him stood Mishina, whose face was now painted an unbroken yellow. It bothered Talus that he still couldn't make out the shaman's features.

  'Welcome to you, Creyak!' Tharn cried. His rumbling voice was more than a match for the wind.

  The crowd murmured in response.

  'Your king, Hashath, has joined the ancestors in the afterdream!'

  Another murmur.

  'Before I place my feet in the tracks my father made, we must say our farewells according to the ways of Creyak.' Tharn glanced at Mishina, who nodded. 'But first there is a wrong to be righted.'

  Tharn made his way through the crowd. Heads turned to track his progress ... all the way up to where Talus and Bran were seated. When Tharn stopped, the heads stopped too. Now the entire village was staring at them. Bran squirmed uneasily. Talus waited for Tharn to speak.

  'Talus—with your strange ways, you have seeded in me an equally strange idea: that the man who killed my father may somehow be brought to ... I cannot think of the word to use.'

  'The word does not exist,' Talus replied. 'But the idea does. If what you wish is for this man to answer the questions his actions have raised, then yes, I wish it too.'

  'To answer.' Tharn 'Yes, that will do. But before we can do this, I must put things right between us.'

  Bran threw Talus a quizzical look.

  'Here in Creyak, we do not trust strangers. Strangers who come in the midst of death are doubly dangerous. However, this afternoon I have learned something new. A woman of our village - her name is Lethriel—was out gathering herbs on the glen just before dawn. She watched you descend from the cliffs. So I know you were not in Creyak last night.'

  'I thought I saw someone out there!' said Bran. 'Let him finish, Bran, said Talus. 'Tharn—what do you say this means?'

  'It means you were not on this island when the king died. You did not kill him.'

  The woman who'd served them was by now heading for the opposite side of the fire. As Tharn spoke she smiled their way, and Talus had no doubt this was the woman called Lethriel. The herbs in the stew were probably the very ones she'd been collecting that morning.

  'I saw her,' Bran said again. 'I knew it.'

  Tharn knelt. He placed his hand first on Bran's shaggy head, then on Talus's hairless one.

  'Our food and fire are yours,' he said. 'You are welcome in Creyak. But we expect a reward for our hospitality.'

  'Name it,' said Talus, knowing exactly what was coming.

  'A story,' said Tharn. 'Tell us a tale, bard. Make it about life and death, because that is what concerns us here tonight.'

  With that, he stepped away, returning to the core of his family and leaving Talus and Bran to face the crowd.

  'Leave this to me,' said Talus.

  'I intend to,' said Bran.

  Talus looked out over the sea of faces. Lightning flashed above the smoke hole, reflecting off several hundred pairs of eyes: eyes that were looking only at him. Somewhere among them was the killer.

  He wondered briefly which story he would tell. Would it be an old one, or a new one that came to him even as he spoke it? He wouldn't know until he opened his mouth.

  'Once, a boy dreamed his father was dead --' an old story, then; that was just fine '-- and the dream was so real that the boy thought it was true. He became so sad that he ran away from his village. The boy ran for many days, all the way out of this world and into the next. There he found a lake. It was night and the water was black.

  'Soon, a giant rose up from the water of the lake, but he was not wet. He was bigger than a thousand men, and he wore the feathers of a thousand different hawks. Many ordinary men and women gathered at the lakeside to honour him.

  'The giant raised his arms and turned around many times, but he did not grow dizzy. When he stopped, his left side was facing his people. They waded into the water and swarmed over him and tore off his feathers, revealing a dreadful bloody mass of bones and meat beneath. The land turned as black as the lake water and the giant said, "This is a night of death." And, across many worlds, many thousands died.

  'The boy was terrified, so he hid all through the following day until the next night. As soon as it was dark, the giant emerged from the water again. Again he turned around many times, but this time he stopped with his right side facing his people. They tore off his feathers, this time revealing a naked body shining with glossy brown skin. The moon blazed and turned the land to silver, and the giant said, "This is a night of life
." And, across many worlds, many thousands were born.

  'The boy ran home and found his father was not dead after all, but alive. He embraced him, but he did not tell him what he had seen. That night, when he went to sleep, he feared he would have the same bad dream. But he did not. Nor did he ever dream of death again, throughout all his long life.'

  When Talus's words had trailed away into the night, Mishina rapped his staff sharply on the ground, three times. The villagers responded by thumping their heels. Acknowledging the applause with a low bow, Talus seated himself once more at Bran's side.

  'Later, when the singing has begun,' he murmured, 'pretend the food has curdled your stomach. We will say you have retired to the house. They trust us now. You will not be followed. Are you sure you are ready to do this?'

  Before Bran could answer, someone landed beside them in a cloud of dust. It was Arak, the youngest of the king's sons. His arrival coincided with another flash of lightning, much brighter than the last. Two breaths later, thunder boomed.

  Arak reached over Bran and grabbed Talus's clean hand with his grimy one.

  'That was a wonderful story!' The lad's eyes were shining. His whole face glowed in the firelight. Then his expression fell. 'Is that really how death comes?'

  Talus pushed Arak's hand gently away. 'It is just a story,' he said.

  Arak shuffled his buttocks on the hard ground. He scratched the back of his neck. Presently, he spoke again.

  'I don't know what to do.' He looked across to where his brothers were feasting. 'None of us do. Can you make it right?'

  'I will do what I can,' said Talus. 'But only if the king-to-be wills it.'

  'Tharn will look after us. He always does. It's the way of Creyak that he should be king now.

  Nothing can stop that.'

  Arak continued to fidget. His eyes continued to rove. He looked lost.